K'taka eyes Rs 70,000 Cr exports from IT, ITeS sector

Bangalore, Oct 25 (UNI) Karnataka has earned Rs 19,500 crore through exports from the IT and ITeS sector during the first six months of the current fiscal and will achieve the targeted Rs 70,000 crore by the end of the financial year, Software Technology Parks of India (STPI), Bangalore, Director J Parthasarathy said today.

Talking to newspersons on the sidelines of the curtain raiser for the IT mega event 'BangaloreIT.in-2007' here, he said that during the last fiscal, the exports from the State, the leader in IT and ITeS sector, stood at Rs 52,000 crore. Over 90 per cent of the exports were from Bangalore, known as the Silicon Valley of India, he added.

Mr Parthasarathy said 70 new companies have been registered in the sector during the first six months, which included 32 foreign companies with 100 per cent foreign equity. Of the remaining 38 domestic companies, some were expanding their units. The new companies were mainly in enterprise, telecom and animation verticals.

The State had seen 30,000 professionals added to its IT sector during the period, to take the total to 4.3 lakh. By the end of the fiscal, the number was expected to grow to 4.75 lakh, he said.

Mr Parthasarathy said STPI had brought down the bandwidth cost by 40 per cent to help the ITeS and BPO companies, which were badly affected by the appreciation of the Rupee.

The Karnataka Government had allotted land to STPI in Gulbarga and Mysore to set up incubation centres. It already had land in Bangalore and tier-II cities like Mangalore and Hubli.

Karnataka IT and BT Secretary M N Vidyashankar said the State Government was encouraging IT and BPO companies to set up units in tier-II cities to bring down the pressure on Bangalore.

This had started working with BPO major Geosoft setting up a unit in Hubli, where 1,500 employees, mostly locals, had started working.

A similar unit by the same company would begin its operations in Bellary next month. The Government had identified ten acres of land to set up BPO firms in smaller cities like Kolar, Tumkur, Shimoga, Hassan and Kushalnagar, he added.

UNI